Hi all, new here. I searched for a specific answer before posting but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for, so here goes....

Can 'fishing kayaks' be reasonably safely used on inland lake routes?

My brother and I are considering a paddling trip on the isle, but not sure if our yaks are reasonable vesssels for the inland lakes. Specifically, we have a Wilderness Systems Commader 120 and a WS Tarpon 120. One is a hybrid canoe/yak that you sit down inside of and the other is a ride on top. Both are 12'.

It is clear these are totally unworthy of anything on Lake Superior, but what about the inland lakes? Or maybe only a specific inland lake route?

I'm not worried about portage difficulty or gear capacity, only lake worthiness.

Of course there is always the rare risk of very high straight line winds creating dangerous seas on even quite small bodies of water, but these types of events are extremely rare in this part of the country. Indeed there are frequent and fairly short thunderstorms but I'm speaking of tornado-like winds. It's only happened a couple of times in the past few decades based on my memory. These types of events would be dangerous no matter one's location, either on or off the water but they are also short lived.

In reality, the only inland lake that should cause potential concern is Siskiwit Lake, of course due to its size if there are sustained winds along it's length. If you are attempting to get to (or from) Malone Bay CG, you might be delayed by a day (or even two). Even getting from the Intermediate Lake portage trail head over to Wood Lake can get iffy. These circumstances can be true for most any canoe paddler as well. But I would not let those possibilities prevent scheduling a trip through that area. If I was scheduling a pickup (or dropoff) at Malone Bay, I would make sure to plan for some flexibility of an extra day or two in the total trip length. As a note, varying your pickup date is almost never an option. You might get lucky but never plan on it. The Voyageur only stops when there is a reservation and communicating a change to the ferry operator would be complicated or unreliable.

I haven’t. I know I can shoulder it for a short time, but some of those longer portages are formidable. I would prefer a Kevlar canoe for the two of us, but not sure where to obtain one outside of purchase, which is not cheap. Having kayaks already were leaning towards that.

I have done a few trips with a good friend who has a Hobie. He has used it for both inland lakes and Superior (With good weather). He had the model you can pedal as well as using a sail rig (we sailed it on Siskiwit).